The fissure behind the Anchor's chamber was a dead end. I stood in the silent dark, the ward-stone's glow guttering in my hand, the Inquisitor's cold pronouncements echoing from the chamber behind me. He was sealing the entrance. I was trapped with a thousand-year-old tragedy and a man who would bury us both to keep a secret.
Think.
Greyford thought I'd stolen the Grimoire. That was my only leverage.
I retreated deeper into the fissure, my back against the rough stone. I couldn't fight him. I had to outwit him. I focused on the threads of fate only I could see. In the chamber, Greyford was a knot of disciplined, steely-grey energy, woven through with the brittle, judgmental white of fanatical faith. The Anchor was a weeping sore of green-black corruption. And stretching from me, faint but undeniable, was a silver-blue thread that led up, out, and north—to Kaelen.
I couldn't manipulate Greyford's thread. But I could manipulate my own. And my thread was connected to the Anchor's agony. That connection was now a tangible, magical fact in this place.
I placed my palm against the rock wall, directly over the point where my silver-blue thread seemed to pulse into the stone toward the chamber. I closed my eyes and did not push my holy power out. Instead, I pulled.
I drew not on the light within me, but on the connection itself. I focused on the Anchor's despair, the raw, psychic poison of its endless suffering, and I tugged on the thread that linked its pain to my presence.
In the chamber, the Anchor's mental voice, which had been a low moan, rose to a sudden, piercing shriek of anguish. The green threads of corruption flared violently, lashing out like wounded serpents.
Greyford's sealing chant cut off with a curse. "Silence, abomination!"
But the Anchor's distress wasn't an attack he could counter with a purification rite. It was a reaction—to me. I pulled again, harder, making my own spiritual "signature" an irritant, a sudden flare of agonizing stimulus to the tormented entity.
The blackened skeleton on the dais shuddered. The flesh-like Grimoire glowed with an answering malevolent light. The chamber itself seemed to groan.
Greyford stumbled back, his white orb-light swinging wildly. He wasn't under attack, but the foundation of his ritual—a controlled, static environment—was crumbling into chaos. To seal a volatile magical artifact, you need stability. I was making the artifact scream.
"What have you done, you fool?" He shouted into the fissure, his voice laced with real alarm for the first time.
I didn't answer. I released the connection and let the Anchor's cries subside into ragged, psychic sobs. The green threads dimmed. The chamber fell into a tense, trembling quiet.
I stepped to the mouth of the fissure. Greyford stood facing me, his orb held high, his face a mask of furious confusion. The sealing lines on the floor were inert and incomplete.
"I've done nothing, Inquisitor," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "But this place… It reacts. It feels intense. Your desire to lock it away feels like the first sealing. It feels like him. Erebus."
I was gambling everything on the glimpse I'd gotten from the Grimoire, on the Anchor's story.
Greyford's eyes narrowed. "Do not speak that name. Heresy drips from your tongue, girl."
"Is it heresy to name the architect of our prison?" I took a step forward, into the chamber. The green threads recoiled from me slightly, as did the holy light within me. "You felt it. When you tried to seal it, it fought back. Not against you. Against the memory in your magic. The Church's rites are born from his, aren't they? You're using a copy of the jailer's key. And the prisoner recognizes it."
His knuckles were white around the orb. I had struck a nerve. The Church's history was murky, its origins tied to the first Saints. How much did he know? How much did he suspect?
"You are theorizing about forces beyond your comprehension," he hissed. "You have trespassed into a forbidden locus and stirred powers that should sleep. For that, you will be disciplined."
"Discipline me, then," I said, spreading my hands, a hollow show of submission. "But finish your seal first. If you can."
I was calling his bluff. If he resumed the sealing ritual, I would pull on the Anchor's pain again, disrupting it. He couldn't both control the chamber and subdue me.
He understood the stalemate. His jaw worked. "You will come with me. Now. You will be confined to a sanctified cell until your judgment."
That was my exit. A sanctified cell was still within the academy. It was not a sealed crypt.
I nodded. "As you command, Inquisitor."
I walked toward him, my every sense screaming. As I passed the dais, the Anchor's voice brushed my mind, faint and desperate. "The thread… you used our thread. You understand the connection…"
I do, I thought back, hoping it could hear. I will not forget you.
Greyford grabbed my arm with a grip like iron, his other hand keeping the orb aloft. He marched me out of the chamber, up the spiral stairs. With a flick of his wrist and a growled word, the shimmering door in the library floor solidified into ordinary, unmarked stone. The Anchor was sealed in, but the entrance was also sealed shut. He was containing the problem, not solving it.
He did not take me to the detention cells. He took me to his office in the clergy's wing. He shoved me into the rigid chair I'd occupied during our first "guidance" session and locked the door.
"You will wait here," he said, his flinty eyes boring into me. "I must consult the Archbishop. Your fate is no longer mine alone to decide." He began gathering scrolls and writing a hurried dispatch. "What you have seen… what you have touched… it cannot leave this room. Do you understand the danger you have unleashed with your childish curiosity?"
"I understand that a soul is in torment below our feet, and it is poisoning this place," I said quietly.
He froze, then turned, a strange, almost fearful light in his eyes. "Souls are the province of the Goddess. It is not for you to judge or pity. That… entity is a magical residue, a flaw in the first Saint's outstanding work. It must be managed, not mourned." He was convincing himself as much as me.
He finished his dispatch, sealed it with his personal sigil, and rang a bell. A silent, hooded acolyte appeared at the door. "Take your message to the Archbishop's courier. Swiftly."
The acolyte bowed and left. Greyford turned back to me, looking older and wearier. "You will remain here under guard until instructions arrive. Pray, Lady Thorne. Pray for clemency, and for the wisdom to forget what you have seen."
He left, locking the door behind him. I heard the click of a key and the murmur of voices as he posted guards.
I was not in a crypt, but I was in a different kind of cage. The Archbishop would be informed. Cassian would likely find out. My time was now measured in hours, not days.
I sat in the stark room, the aftermath of adrenaline making me shake. I had survived the confrontation without exposing my holy power, but I had confirmed my dangerous knowledge. Greyford was terrified—not of me, but of the truth I'd glimpsed.
My investigation had hit the bedrock of ecclesiastical power. And I was now chained to it.
As I waited in the silent office, I felt the holy power within me, agitated by the close contact with the Anchor's corruption and the fight-or-flight desperation, swirl and press against my control. It was a rising tide, seeking an outlet. Containing it during the confrontation had taken everything I had.
The pressure built behind my eyes, in my chest. A faint, golden warmth seeped into my chilled fingers.
The accidental manifestation wasn't a matter of if anymore.
It was a matter of when.
The worst possible place for it to happen would be in a locked room in the clergy's wing, under the watchful eye of the Church.